WTO Rule Against non GM stance
Great! Thanks WTO. Perhaps if you could ride over other democratic concerns we might have about.. well about whatever you want! You're the boss *tips hat*
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WTO Rule Against non GM stance
Great! Thanks WTO. Perhaps if you could ride over other democratic concerns we might have about.. well about whatever you want! You're the boss *tips hat*
If you applied democracy as a litmus test would there be free-trade at all? Wouldn't protectionism rule supreme? Wouldn't minorities everywhere quake in fear?
So you are saying that it is fair enough for a untested technology that the UK neither wants nor needs to be imposed on them (largely for the benefit of a couple of US agro-chemical companies)?
What would WTO do if Britain would refuse?
I am all for it being allowed. Consumers are the ones staunchly against eating the stuff, and that is unlikely to change.
I think that a product that is tradable internationally should be sold here - but that doesn't mean that we have to buy it!!!
~:smoking:
The only concern I have with GM food is that the manipulated genes might end up in the natural gene pool...wich is actually a huge concern.
Agreed, but how many people study product descriptions good enough to discover it's GM?Quote:
I think that a product that is tradable internationally should be sold here - but that doesn't mean that we have to buy it!!!
Due to the size of public backlash against the foods it is often trumpeted by shops that their own brands don't contain any, and often individual items state they are GM free.
Bacteria have these genes in already, and are quite capable of taking raw DNA from the soil or other dead bacteria and incorporating it into their own DNA, so for most organisms there's nothing new.
In higher plants, some might have limited affect, but in nature I believe that evolutionary pressure would be agianst plants with the genes as they require pampering in other ways in a controlled environment to thrive.
~:smoking:
Hmm... Surely this ruling does not allow them to be grown here? And then the EU might prevent anything which allows them to being grown into the EU? And also wouldn't the foods be labelled as GM?
Why do people let their archaic views stand in the way of scientific progress? :wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by Idaho
Honestly, this GM food stuff is silly. It's nothing more than fear mongering and agricultural protectionism on the part of those against it.Quote:
Originally Posted by article
Yes I agree, if we get the untested GM food out on the market we get more - and human - subjects to test it on! Long live scientific progress!Quote:
Originally Posted by Xiahou
:elephant: :elephant: :elephant: :jumping:
:tomato2:
Perhaps - but ultimately it should be the consumers' decision whether they want to buy/eat GM food or not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xiahou
The problem is that I doubt that the consumer actually will have the choice as the required labeling will be a bit difficult to enforce in practice (and IIRC the US farmers strictly oppose the labeling)
Perhaps- but I hardly think that government imposed, protectionist bans is really going to allow the consumers to decide.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ser Clegane
These GM food scare tactics become even more unconscionable when it comes to 3rd world countries. This scientifically unjustified scare mongering in Europe is spreading to countries where people are litterally dying of starvation. These hardier and more resistant crops would do much better in many of these places, in addition to opening them up to wider food imports. Yet, some would rather see these developing countries ban gm foods to prop up their otherwise uncompetitive agricultural industry.
As long as complete labeling along the chain is ensured I personally wouldn't have a problem with lifting the ban - if that is not possible, a ban seems to reflect the will of a majority of the population.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xiahou
And the local farmers would have to buy seeds and the pesticides from companies like Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta (which is a Swiss company, BTW - so it's not like it would be only "evil Americans" involved here - also the agrochemicals businesses of the German BASF and Bayer would certainly increase their interest in GM crops as soon as they are acceted in the EU)Quote:
These hardier and more resistant crops would do much better in many of these places, in addition to opening them up to wider food imports. Yet, some would rather see these developing countries ban gm foods to prop up their otherwise uncompetitive agricultural industry.
Well, that was easy. Yet another international dispute sorted out via the Backroom. ~DQuote:
Originally Posted by Ser Clegane
Canada has acted shamefully regarding GM foods. A few years back, our government lobbied to make it illegal (in the EU and here) to say on prepared food packaging that there are GM products contained within.
They said it would just confuse the consumer. :dizzy2:
:deal2: "Just sign this, say that, and you gets yer money. Repeat after me - 'GM foods are good for kids'"
:greedy: "GM - foods - are - good - for - kids. Now where's my check?"
To say GM foods are untested is melodramatic. They are tested, and continue to be tested. Is the data compiled as large as you would like? Obviously not in your case.Quote:
Originally Posted by Idaho
Things like this happen, e.g: I don't like Siemans linear accelerators. Their target design is inferior, their reliability inferior yet they refuse to change it. The US neither needs nor wants them, but due to fair trade practices and price breaks some Therapy centers buy them. I could get melodramatic and say "off-line accelerators kill cancer patients every day!" Doesn't make it true....tough the validate
Yes. It is called the free market. Generations of Brits voted for it, so it is little use complaining now, is it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Idaho
It would authorise the US or whoever else was trying to sell GM products in the UK to ban or apply tarrifs to selected UK products. It is not anti-democratic. The UK government could still ban imports, but we would have to accept restrictions on our exports to the countries affected. The job of the WTO would be to make sure that any retaliation was proportionate.Quote:
What would WTO do if Britain would refuse?
Idaho, doesn't Communism extole a free market as an extremely good thing? I don't think it's possible to profess to want some aspects and not others. All or nothing and I think that all is a far more socialist solution...
~:smoking:
What exactly is going to happen? I personally think GM might be ok if there are laws forcing you to mark the packages cointaining the food so that the consumer knows it's GM food. If not, then it's pretty evil to allow people to sell untested, potentially harmful food to people against their will, giving people no way at all to know how they can avoid the products if they want to.
I have difficulties understanding why some politicians are removing many different product information requirements laws. For example the EU can now sell fruit drinks without a signle percent of real fruit contents as juice, while previously only drinks mostly consisting of fruit contents were only allowed to be called juice, making it really difficult to find what I really want to find. Hopefully they'll at least keep laws that forbid producers to mark goods as non-GM or 100% fruit content if that isn't the case. If GM food becomes legal and the producers aren't compelled to mark the products as GM food, then I'll certainly buy from the first producer who clearly marks his/her goods with a little non-GM label. While breeding of wheat, corn etc. during the millenia behind us is genetical manipulation, it's been a slow rate process very close to the natural processes, and has been tested thoroughly. We know from many different plants that it IS possible for certain genetical combinations to cause a plant to produce very poisonous substances. Therefore any GM food produced by quick alteration of DNA of the plant in a way that doesn't resemble the normal "breeding" of plants could potentially create any of the poisonous substances existing in any of the today existing herbs, and possibly also a few not yet known substances. Any GM food produced therefore should be chemically analysed thoroughly to prove none of these substances exist in it, before being sold on the market - something I doubt law, or the economical competition climate in the area, enforces today.
Finally genetically manipulating plants has two potential and very dangerous side-effects:
- short-term: the ecosystems around the plants adapt, so if the plants get more resistive to parasites, the parasites get stronger. Such parasites can then spread to normal, non-GM plants, and destroy them
- long-term: if people start using GM plants on a larger scale, i.e. say 90% of all plants are GM, we could get problems with genetical variety and it's possible that we all end up with a plant that is a potential time bomb that'll stop working after a while, due to fairly deterministic genetical degradation patterns, or because ecosystem changes will make that particular configuration weak in a future ecosystem. That would cause global starvation on a VERY massive scale. Agriculture over the world should be so varied that the largest possible crisis we could think of would only hurt, say, 10% of all plants at the most. Thus genetical variety and plants who have evolved naturally or by breeding during a longer period are important to assure we don't run into a genetical dead end with our plants. If ONE GM alteration is significantly more successful on the market than others, there's a risk ALL growers will start using it, creating this horror scenario. Thus, GM food is only a good thing if it undergoes heavy testing, and only targets the luxurous part of the market.
First: they have all undergone one hell of a lot of testing. You make it sound like some scientists got drunk, stuck in some genes and then started flogging it to the market.
The genes added are pretty specific, and the ones that people seem to be most worried about are either antibiotic resistance (which invariably came from bacteria) or pesticide resistance which I feel is more of a relevant issue, except that the evolutionary pressure for the genes drops considerably when the pesticide is not present.
Humans have accelerated evolution of plants drastically. OK, by tried and tested methods, but to say at the same speed of nature is frankly complete twaddle.
The loss of genetic variability is a very large problem. Although not a pancea one counter argument would be that if several different companies achieve similar goals using different techniques it is extremely unlikely that all will be affected at once - although the world would suffer if wheat was destroyed en mass for example.
Parasites would develop resistance to the man made pesticides, and may become more suseptable to pressures such as drought or the weather. As non GM plants do not use pesticides the parasites would be less able to cope, not more.
~:smoking:
Product Labeling.
Have a big label on it saying GM food.
Have it also include it is plant to plant, animal to plant, human to plant DNA etc.
Heh. You must not have eat any wheat products then. Wheat is a genetically modified food, after all. Genes from several different plants were combined into one. The only thing different is how humans genetically modified wheat.
If you're not angry about wheat (which I sense you aren't), getting irate at selected GM foods because you don't like how they were modified is silly.
Oh, and there is the whole matter of free trade agreements.
Crazed Rabbit
1) Transgenic DNA insertion is a whole different scenario to that of cross breeding a plant.
2) Free Trade should never be put above democracy or peoples health. If people vote for pesticide free food, or buy only organic food... then the government should not be forced to feed them food that has pesticides.
3) Free Trade agreements... are a really good thing. They should also only apply when the labour force has equal or better rights to the country they ar exporting to. Why should local markets suffer because overseas manufacturers flout labour laws...
Different (faster) procedure for the same results. Arguing that one is some sort of frankenstienish bogeyman when both achieve the same results-genetic modification of a plant-is illogical.Quote:
Originally Posted by Papewaio
Nobody is forcing the people to buy GM food, and there is no scientific proof of it being unhealthy.
Overseas manufacturers do not 'flout' labor laws. Often, all third world countries have going for them is cheap labor. Free trade, even with cheap labor countries, is good, as it enables the workers in those poor countries to get a job, and the people in rich western countries to get stuff for cheaper.
Crazed Rabbit
That sounds suspiciously like the logic that presents child labor in Third World as a basically positive thing, you know...
What a daring tilt you had at that strawman! Bravo!
I'm not surprised that you've resorted to accusing me of supporting child labor, which I abhor.
Crazed Rabbit
Straw man my ass. Just pointing out the "it enables the workers in those poor countries to get a job, and the people in rich western countries to get stuff for cheaper" sounds suspiciously similar.
Transgenic describes things that you cannot normally achieve through cross-breeding.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
For instance scorpion DNA in a plant is not normal. No matter how many times a scorpion humps a flower it could not create a scorpion-plant combination.
Considering all the problems we have with heavily processed foods, I am not willing to bet that there will not be problems with food that has been GMed. Look at the problems that sugar from Corn produces. A hi calorie, sweet food that does not turn off hunger pangs leading the consumer to eat more sweetened food then if they ate the equivalent Cane sugar.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
If you notice my first post I said that it should be clearly labled that it is GM food. And that governments should not be pressured if their citizens do not wish to eat GM food.
They do. They have saftey and environmental practices that would be illegal in the country they are exporting to.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
Things like over long shifts, company shops, welded emergency exits, little worker rights, lack of safety mechanisms on mechanical apparutus, etc etc.
If free trade is to be just that then the labour component should be up to standard. It should not just be a matter of capital exploitation. It can and should be a win win scenario.
The problem I refer to is that the current system of laws doesn't even address this problem. It's actually more likely to find a GM manipulation that increases cost efficiency dramatically than it is by breeding to achieve such a significant improvement. That's why this technique is more endangered to removing genetical variety - if such a significantly improving manipulation is found, almost everyone will adopt it.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
Unfortunately it's not that simple - it's just as easy for parasites to adapt to pesticides as changed DNA of plants. It's the same principle that has caused predators to get faster and better hunters when their preys got faster. Any increased difficulties that doesn't kill the species only makes it stronger. In this case this also creates two problems - 1. the GM food will not be as resistible as people expected it to be. Can cause miscalculations which could cause at best economical problems for a few producers, at worst starvation problems. 2. if parasites evolve to become more dangerous to plants in the ecosystems around GM plants, they may spread and cause much more damage to non-GM plants, forcing most growers to either adopt GM plants, or be able to produce nothing. This will most likely cause the loss of genetical variety that is so dangerous.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
The problem with these problems is that they resemble all other environmental problems - acting in a problem-causing way gives you a benefit on the market, so nobody will start acting in a non-problem-causing way first, which means nobody really addresses the problem. That's why regulations are needed at this early stage. For environmental problems people have gotten so used to being able to destroy as much as they want for economical benefit that it's very difficult to teach them anything else.
In any case my conclusions are:
1. the current regulation mechanisms are inadequate for avoiding these problems
2. GM food can only be perfectly harmless if it remains a luxurous product and not a common market product
3. it's our right to know what's in the products we buy, so product labelling is a must